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Second Bail Hearing for Zimmerman

By Jennifer Preston June 29, 2012 9:36 amJune 29, 2012 9:36 am

Pool photo by Joe BurbankGeorge Zimmerman sits in a Seminole County courtroom during his bond hearing on Friday.

Updated | 2:25 p.m. A Florida judge heard more than two hours of arguments and testimony on Friday at the second bond hearing for George Zimmerman, who is awaiting trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

The judge, Kenneth Lester Jr., in Circuit Court in Sanford, Fla., is not expected to make his decision until next week on whether he will grant bail for a second time to Mr. Zimmerman, 28, who sat next to his lawyer, wearing a gray suit, tie and white shirt.

His lawyer, Mark O’Mara, argued that his client is not a flight risk or a threat to the community and should be released on the same $150,000 bond that was set in April after his arrest.

Judge Lester revoked Mr. Zimmerman’s bond on June 1, and he was returned to jail when prosecutors said that he and his wife had misled the court about how much money they had during the April bond hearing. His wife, Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was later arrested on perjury charges.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Zimmerman and his wife spoke in code during recorded telephone conversations when he was in jail about more than $135,000 that was raised online on his behalf from a Web site that he had set up before his arrest.

He is heard instructing his wife on the tapes to use some of the money to pay their bills and to transfer other funds into credit union accounts. Neither Mr. Zimmerman nor his wife disclosed to the judge how much money had been raised online in their testimony at the April bond hearing.

Mr. Zimmerman did not testify on his behalf. Neither did his wife. But Mr. O’Mara said that the couple alerted him four days after the April bond hearing about the money. He said that he believed that Mr. Zimmerman and his wife did not mention the money from the online fund-raising site because they were fearful and confused.

Mr. O’Mara also called a forensic financial specialist to support his argument that the couple was not trying to hide the money when they were moving it from the Web site to credit union accounts.

Mr. Zimmerman, who claims he shot Mr. Martin, 17, in self-defense last February when the teenager walked through his condo development in Sanford, did not dispute his wife’s testimony during the April bond hearing when she said she did not know how much money was in the fund and said they had limited means for bail because she was a full-time nursing student and he was unemployed.

Judge Lester said that he expected Mr. Zimmerman would have alerted his lawyer at that time that his wife was not telling the truth.

Mr. O’Mara also said that Mr. Zimmerman and his wife no longer had access to money in that fund because it is now in a separate account that is being used for his legal defense.

During the hearing, Mr. O’Mara also tried to argue that the state’s case against Mr. Zimmerman was not strong and that was yet another reason he should not be held without bail, awaiting a trial that might not begin for another year.

“I am asking that he not spend the next year in jail,” Mr. O’Mara told the judge, adding that “he might never get convicted by a jury of his peers.”

As part of an effort to argue that the state’s case was not strong, Mr. O’Mara called an emergency medical technician who treated Mr. Zimmerman at the scene. The technician said that Mr. Zimmerman’s face was covered with blood when he arrived and that he had lacerations on the back of his head that required stitches.

Mr. O’Mara also called George Zimmerman’s father to the stand. He testified that he had told police that it was his son, screaming for help, screams that could be heard on 911 tapes as people called the police when they heard the scuffle.

Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, who was sitting in the courtroom, listening to the testimony, had told the police that it was her son’s voice that could be heard on the tapes, crying for help.

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